


A gift you cannot give away

by Palpalou



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Arranged Marriage, F/M, Fae & Fairies, Forced Marriage, Hatred at First Sight, M/M, Pre-Relationship, the adventures of tiny francis (briefly)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:20:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28139070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Palpalou/pseuds/Palpalou
Summary: The first time Francis saw one of the Fair Folk up close, he was fourteen. He had sand in his shoes and his arms tight around a pile of royalist proclamations he had been tasked to deposit on the French shore.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames, Sophia Cracroft/Captain Francis Crozier (unrequited)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 25
Collections: The Terror Bingo (2020)





	A gift you cannot give away

**Author's Note:**

> For the terror bingo square : “handcuffed/bound together” but make it a metaphor ;p  
> Thank you shark-from-the-park for reading this when i was feeling tender and saying, "it's good. you're good. it's all good." ♥

The first time Francis saw one of the Fair Folk up close, he was fourteen. He had sand in his shoes and his arms tight around a pile of royalist proclamations he had been tasked to deposit on the French shore.

From the sea, the flagpole which his lieutenant had marked out to him had seemed quite close, but only, Francis had realised as he’d come closer, because of the gentle slope of the strand. The wooden post was actually much taller than it seemed, and had been raised at the very edge of the beach, where grass started growing in the sand, just beyond the deceivingly gentle rise of the ground that now hid the sea from Francis – and him from his shipmates waiting in the shallop they had rowed to the shoreline.

One moment there was no one around, no sound but the distant rumble of the surf, birdsongs and the angry buzzing of a fly in the afternoon sun closer by.

The next, a rather tall man was standing against the pole, leaning against it one-handed. His posture seemed indolent, until Francis noticed the ugly, red scowl on his face, like a toddler on the edge of a nasty tantrum, his fair curls only adding to the resemblance.

Francis nearly dropped his bundle and sprinted off right then and there but some hook of strange curiosity held him back. It was the draw of uncanniness which was the first mark of the Folk, although Francis would only come to this realisation later in life.

The man had noticed him as well. “ _Toi, gamin_ ”, he said with some urgency in his voice, “ _libère-moi à l’instant, si tu sais ce qui est bon pour toi_.”

Francis blinked, his school days not so far behind him that he could not recognise the gist of what the man had said, but all the more perplexed. Help the man free? He could see no shackle. 

But, after a quick glance at his clothes, the man started over. “Oh, you’re an Islander. Well. Free me, I said, and a boon you’ll receive.”

That is when Francis noticed the horseshoe nailed to the post. Fairy traps where forbidden home, on pain of banishment or death, but any law to this effect had been abolished in France in 1789, when the Fair Folk had been declared _persona non grata_ on this side of the Channel. The only point of contact with the iron was the side of the man’s palm, but he would still never have been able to get free on his own.

Francis took his little sailor’s knife out of his pocket and twisted and wiggled the blade in a gap between the horseshoe and the wood. There was only one nail, but it was long and buried deep, and Francis had to use his knife as a lever, pushing on the handle and shimmying it closer when the gap widened as well as he could to gradually loosen the iron from the wood. All the while, the Fairy sighed and huffed impatiently, until at last a final torsion of the wrist had the horseshoe falling off.

The man took a rapid step to the side, shaking his hand as if getting rid of pins and needles, and giving Francis the opportunity to get a closer look at him.

Now that he was aware of the man’s ethereal nature, he noticed the blue tinge under his skin. Beyond that, the man was not as impressive as Folk were in the stories. He was rather tall, but not preternaturally so. In fact, he looked rather like one of the richly-dressed men one sometimes came across on the docks, even if the cut of his habit was several years out of date. People with powdered face and soft hands, ship owners who had never themselves wrapped their hands around a rope. Even now that he was released from his predicament, he still had a sneering edge to his mouth which Francis was starting to understand was his natural expression.

He spat at the base of the wooden post, and a circle of grass the size of a penny blackened with a sizzling sound. Francis frowned, and his glower grew stronger when he noticed the blade of his trusty knife had gotten bent and he could no longer fold it shut.

“The French have those traps built all over the country nowadays. Everybody knows the Folk ought to stay clear of the coast.”

The man peered down his nose at him. “Oh, everybody knows, do they? Well, I’m not everybody, am I?”

Francis, quite unimpressed by now, raised an eyebrow at the haughty tone. Even in his youthful round face, the effect was striking, although it was wasted on the Fairy, who was busy inspecting his hand as if to make sure the iron had left no blemish. “… What’s my boon for saving you to be, then?”

“Boon? Why, yes. Lest it be said Lord Gambier is in debt to a little sailor boy… Oh oh!”

Francis followed the Fairy’s suddenly agitated look and, although his eyes were much weaker, caught a glimpse of blue caps moving in a gap between the trees a few hundred yards away. He inhaled sharply. Depending on how straight the horse path was, Francis had maybe just enough time to reach the sea before the gendarmes came upon him.

From the corner of his eye, Francis saw the Fairy’s wings spreading out from where they had been folded invisibly against his back, two tear-shaped gossamer panes, and, with the sharp whispery sound that Folk magic made, the man was gone.

All that was left of him was the fattest, blackest fly Francis had ever seen, which buzzed speedily away.

Francis spent a precious few seconds boggling at the thoughtlessness of the stranger. Then he shook himself and started for the beach at a run.

The shallop was still waiting, only it had been pushed back in the water so they could row away without delay once he was back. It was fortunate, too. Francis half-waded, half-swam up to it, and was pulled in with a strong pull on his belt just as the first gendarme appeared on top of the sand hill.

Back on the Amaryade's deck, he suffered his lieutenant’s admonishment meekly and did not tell anyone about what had happened, for he had nothing to show for it and no desire to boast.

With the years, the memory of the Lord Gambier faded more than half away, even if sometimes Francis at his most bitter would wonder whether the touch of a fairy could have helped along the career of an Irishman or if even that would not have sufficed to compensate the apparent many faults the admiralty found with him.

*

Jane Franklin was as unusual a member of the Fair Folk as one could find in England.

Most of that race where flighty. The dailies were full of tales of an enchanted heifer found dead in its stable one morning, the fairy gold turned to mud and dead leaves in a family coffers, or the occasional charmed river going savage or drying up when Folk left an area, for a few months or the next century.

Lady Jane had kept to her husband for close to two decades now and had shored up his naval career with her gifts, even as that realm, with the salt of the sea and the iron in the hulls of their ships, was forbidden to her and all of her kind. Francis had seen, with his own eyes, an enchanted pennywhistle Sir John owned from her which would raise eastern, western or southern winds depending on the tune which was blown into it. Without his wife, the man would probably never have amounted to much more than a sailor of middling competence. Still, Francis did not envy him.

When he was at his most uncharitable, generally when Sophia and he were not on good terms, he would sometimes muse there was something of the spider in Lady Jane. Tonight, he could not help noticing that the silver garlands strung along the ceilings and walls made the house look somehow like an enormous web, and the guests like so many flies, beetles and ladybugs all eager to praise their hostess for the grandeur of the trappings.

But it was only Francis’ mood, and nothing one or two more glasses would not cure—for the night.

The air was sweet with the smells of milk, honey and those winter spices the Fair Folk were especially fond of. The house was fairly resonant with good cheer, full as it was of Admiralty men in the rich blue of their gala uniforms, the bright evening gowns of the women like stars in a midnight sky.

Sophia’s was the most striking. This, too, was a gift from Lady Jane; a dress cut out of freshly-driven snow, glinting crystalline in the candlelight and never melting or chilling her flesh. Francis still remembered the powdery whisper of it against his palms when he would embrace Sophia under the rose arbour in the garden. That was over with now.

He caught a flash of russet hair in the crowd, a welcome distraction, and started in that general direction. On his way, he made sure to pass by a long table set up against a wall, where a small porcelain fountain poured an endless stream of spirits to refill his glass. It had emptied itself at some point when he wasn’t looking.

The crowd was quite mixed. Lady Jane had invited both the luminaries of the Admiralty and the younger crowd of the aspirants; ambitious newly-minted officers, their youth a sure marker, if not of the influence of the families backing them, then at least of their political adroitness. The reason for the reception was the winter celebrations, but it was also a first approach ahead of the rumours of a new attempt on the North West Passage. Barrow’s presence probably meant that Sir John was assured a place in the expedition. Now it was left to the rest of them to vye for a line of their own on the roster.

Francis was never sure whether he still had ambition left in him, until he found himself come knocking again at the admiralty’s doors for just one more posting.

He bumped shoulders with someone, muttering a terse apology over his shoulder, more focused on compensating the jarring motion so as not to spill his drink. Craning his neck, he caught another glimpse of what was probably the back of James Ross’ head, and corrected course accordingly.

He had not taken three more steps that his right hand seized painfully, making him drop his glass altogether. It shattered on the parquet, and, as he looked down at the mess uncomprehendingly, he folded at the knees as if a string had been cut, then sprawled on his side. Behind him, he could hear a similar commotion, even as people were starting to turn towards him with concern as well.

His hand started burning as if his glove had caught fire, and he scrambled to take it off, but the burning only grew stronger, spreading out. Muscles and nerves smarted up to his shoulder in sympathy. He grasped at his wrist and gritted his teeth around a pained, spluttering moan. Then, the pain crested, the firebrand resolved itself into a more precise spot, at the base of his third finger. He saw a band of raised skin appear, discoloured as if it had suffered a very localised, very intense burn.

“Good Heavens!” a voice exclaimed by his ear. Francis distantly recognised it was Sir John’s, although it was higher than usual with shock. There was a crowd around him, faces peering down on him and veering wildly, although whether that was shock or the drink’s delayed effect, he wasn’t sure. “A wedding mark!”

Right as black started creeping in the edge of his vision, he heard one last frantic call. “Francis, what have you done!”

*

He woke up with a buzzing in his skull.

He was lying on a rather uncomfortable sofa, jacket off for some reason and neckerchief undone and, after a moment, he recognised the ceiling of Sophia’s room, plaster mouldings slightly blurry at the edge with whatever alcohol was still in his blood. Then he remembered what had just happened.

He looked down at his hand, still bare. Although the pain had faded and the inflammation, subsided, there was now a very obvious ring of dark bruising, which Francis instinctively knew would not fade away as a natural haematoma would have. Sir John had been right; clear as day, it was a wedding mark.

“That was a nasty spell”, Sophia murmured. She was sitting on a footstool by his head, one arm around her knees like a little girl, and Francis realised she had been holding a corner of her snow-weaved dress to his brow while he slept. He blinked. There was light coming in from the hallway through the open door, but the house was silent, no background hubbub of guests talking and tinkling glass.

“How long was I out?” He started, too loud, before bringing down his voice, disturbed by the persistent ringing in his ears. It was as if he had stood too close to a deflagration, although his hearing was fine. He knew if he hadn't still been tipsy, it would have been nigh unbearable. As it is, the haze of whiskey muffled it, somewhat.

Sophia's hands were bare, and her fingers as pink and mother-of-pearl as they had ever been. But Francis knew that. He wouldn't have been feeling as if all the bells in St Paul had taken residence between his ears if the one with whom the spell had yoked him had just been petting his hair while he slept.

“Not very long. It’s only been twenty minutes or so, on my count, since you were brought up here.” She smiled ruefully. “There was quite a scene, beforehand.”

Of course Sir John must have been worried he had tricked his niece into some kind of bond, somehow. Lady Jane had been adverse to the very idea of Sophia leaving her domain, when he was courting her, but it had always seemed it was more Francis, specifically, to whom Sir John objected.

He shook his head as if it would help clear his thoughts, hand closing in a fist, and turned towards her with a beseeching look. “Sophy– Sophia... What happened? Whose is this?”

“I thought you didn’t like to deal much with the Fair Folk.” There was a hint of reproach in her tone, and he recognised by the lilt of her voice that she was repeating something he must have said at some point.

His face creased in confusion, but a blurry wisp of memory came to him. “Once… it was a long time ago, when I was a young man. I helped a Lord out of a trap. A lord… Gambler? Or close to it…”

She hummed. “It seems lieutenant Fitzjames held a few secrets as well. He certainly never boasted of having a Fae's favour.”

“Fitzjames?” He had come across that name before. “Isn’t he one of Barrow’s golden boys?”

Whatever the look on Francis’ face was, it had Sophia laying a comforting hand on his arm. “He was struck the same as you when… this happened.” Then she smiled, half-consoling, half-puckish. “It seems you're not the only one who made a careless wish.”

Francis understood that her levity was meant to be comforting. People getting in uncomfortable situations because of a fairy's flippant whim or their own carelessness was common enough that nobody could be too shocked. But the soft sympathy in her eyes hit Francis worst than a slap, even through the lingering gauze of whiskey, even through the burring in his head.

“There was no _wish_. I didn’t have the time to wish for anything before that damned ingrate flew away, least of all, marriage with a… _Fitzjames_. Sophy, you know I-“

And there he stopped himself, for they had had a very similar conversation a month ago. But it was half a sentence too late, and Sophia’s face had grown cold.

She moved away, and got up, before he had time to catch her hand and apologise for breaching the terms of their agreement. “They are waiting for us downstairs, Francis. If you are better, let’s meet them now.”

*

A fire was burning in the parlour’s hearth, illuminating Lady Jane’s profile and making her taller, more intimidating than she ever seemed in the light of day.

Her husband was standing in the shadows behind her, puffing nervously on a large pipe, and dear James Ross had negotiated somehow a permission to stay and was gazing out the window, his tense frown visible even from his profile.

Lieutenant Gore, whose father Francis had sailed with, and another, silver-haired lieutenant were sitting like anxious schoolchildren on the sofa, for some reason. And a third man occupied the armchair closest to the hearth.

Francis had noticed him earlier, holding court in the thickest of the crowd, clad in dark blues and gold, with his slightly longer-than-fashionable hair and sleek curls—which now had gotten rather in disarray. He was holding a folded handkerchief to the back of his head, where presumably he had the beginnings of a goose egg. His other hand rested on the arm of the chair like it was separate from him. Despite the awkward posture and his dishevelled hair, there was something of the fashion-plate drawing to him. His long legs, maybe, crossed at the ankle in front of him, or a certain affectation in the way he was sprawled in the armchair.

The black of his bruised finger jumped out at Francis.

The soft click of the door behind Sophia had the man raising his head.

His eyes caught at once on Francis, and a trick of light from the fire behind him made it seem as if a drop of gold shone in the brown of them. He had a rather long face, cheeks marked by two deep furrows despite his relative youth. He held his mouth pressed flat, but Francis imagined it could easily turn to a sneer.

Francis felt a pull, low in his ribcage. The noise in his head pitched up to a whine, either because the blur of alcohol was starting to fade, or because the lack of distance made the connection stronger. He felt he should step closer to Fitzjames, to _James_ , who was waiting for him. He felt a terrible, naked want.

It felt like love.

It felt like _love_ , towards a man he had barely noticed before and never talked to, and Francis’ face blanched under a sudden wash of hatred.

He knew it well, and it ordinarily had him reaching for the closest bottle, but now he embraced it. It was vile, and toxic, but it was pure, and it was his, the sort of thing charms and spells could neither cut off nor inoculate. It was so strong it had his vision swimming for a second, but the droning in his head had gone down, and he saw well enough how Fitzjames flinched and glowered at him. There was dismay in that look, clear as day, maybe a hint of disgust, and Francis beheld it with a grim satisfaction.

Now they saw each other clearly. A good starting point, for a marriage.

**Author's Note:**

> *coping with being stuck in my arranged-marriage-with-a-twist fic by writing an arranged-marriage-with-a-twist fic u-u  
> **a one-shot for now, i do have ideas for the rest of it ? but I wanted to finish a thing in 2020 ^^


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